Commercial culture is quite pervasive; there seems to be no way to escape its magnitude,its ideological impact; the colonizing effect it has on the minds of the audiences it reaches.Guy Debord declared we live in the society of spectacle, and no one could really argue tothe contrary. However, in the face of such assertions what kind of information do we reallyget from the media? What do we learn about current science, for example, from films?There seems to be a general consensus on the idea that the “general public” learnsmuch about science and about scientists from the information gathered from films andmainly from science fiction. Conversely, the more sophisticated the scientific advances ofour time become, the further and further away the general public becomes fromunderstanding its premises; the disinformation gap is enormous. The once held ideasabout the understanding of science, an informal education that would be acquiredthrough visits to a museum on weekends, for example, have slowly been eroded by therealization that it is mass media, indeed cinema and to a great extent television that leadsuch information. It is important then, to consider in what measure cinema affects thepublic understanding of science.Databases such as

PubMed

, sponsored by the

National Library of Medicine

and the

National Institutes of Health,

of the United States, reveal increasing interest on the impactthat scientific information presented via mass media has on the public; “[t]he vastmajority of the public is utterly dependent on the media for its knowledge of science”(Klotzko 1998: appendix A3). Surveys conducted mainly in English speaking countriessuch as Australia, England and the United States

1

, have found that the public has agenerally negative perception of biotechnology; “[t]he ability of scientists to apply cloningtechnology to humans has provoked public discussion and media coverage” ... “Much ofthe controversy and debate surrounding human cloning for both therapeutic andreproductive purposes centres on moral and ethical issues” (Shepherd 2007:377). The

Wellcome Trust

’s study titled “Public Perspectives of Human Cloning” (Wellcome 1998)was conducted in order to provide the

British Human Genetics Advisory Commission

(HGAC) with information on where the public stands on developments in biotechnology.It probed the often-made assumption that the public gets most of its scientific knowledgefrom mass media and found that even if it is difficult to ascertain

how much

informationon science is gathered from it, the public tends nevertheless to express itself making use ofnarratives taken from popular culture (Wellcome 1998:38), narratives which give theirconcerns certain coherence. The survey sought to provide deeper insights on issues thatprevious surveys had not addressed

Regarding cloning, for example the study found that “[t]he public have fearfulperceptions of [it] and were shocked by the implications” (Wellcome 1998:3). Whenprompted regarding whether or not cloning was an emotionally close or distant issue tothose interviewed, or whether it was good or bad science, useful or not, morally acceptableor not, the answers included quite revealing allusions to cinema. The conclusions to thestudy found that:Discussions were peppered throughout with negative references to films and booksincluding

. (Wellcome 1998:13).“Overall the findings [in surveys of this type] demonstrate that public views in this areaare far from simple” (Shepherd 2007:391). Even when information that sought toreinforce a positive opinion on the work of science was given to the control groups thestudy worked with, it was generally rejected, “additional factual information did notmodify participants’ primary concerns ... described in the context of popular culturalimagery such as science fiction films” (Wellcome 1998:3).These essays seek to “flesh out” and to a certain point rationalize the various elementsthat make up the content of films that in one way or other inform the public aboutgenetics, cloning and genetic engineering. Their purpose is to shed light on how science ispresented in film; the consistencies and inconsistencies that inform a publicunderstanding of science and take a look at how films act as depositories of information—but not to argue whether or not films are not legitimate sources of scientific informationor validation of scientific work. It does not judge whether or not films should be madeunder the strict supervision of scientific committees or seek the approval of scientificgroups, as was the case with

Gattaca

, or whether or not consultants should be hired toverify the verisimilitude of scientific information.One issue that must be immediately put forward is concern for the blanket blame thatis constantly put on cinema for the public understanding or rather the misunderstandingof science. This position seems to parallel a critique that belittles cultural forms such asreligion, folklore and mythology, forms that traditionally served mankind as carriers ofimportant and often—vital—warnings. Today, although we tend to disregard suchmethods of communication as uninformed, unreliable, undocumented, unscientific, theyonce were—and to a large extent still are—the backbone of many cultures. They still arein many ways carriers of valid information, even though a consensus on “rationality” hasdeveloped that leans towards a tacit censorship of the concerns they heed. How much thepublic learns from cinema might be not as alarming an issue to consider as is how little thepublic learns from many, many other sources including a schooling, that is ill-servedthrough outdated methods and information, and which for the majority of the population

Introduction

5

is suspended at an early stage of an individual’s intellectual life. Therefore, the films in thisvolume are seen from the perspective that they are cultural carriers of tremendous forceand relevance, even if they are deemed to greatly exaggerate the negative part of sciencefor the sake of the dramatic situation (Cormick 2006:181).Original, innovative, or recycled material coming from literary, popular sources orscripts specially created for films reinforces assumptions about the work of science,touches on ancient social taboos, strengthens true presuppositions and or even suspicions,feeds traditional cultural meanings but might also misinform and alarm the public withrespect to the work of science. However, all things considered, cinema keeps it firmlypresent in the public’s mind—and since scientific work affects our lives so dramatically—that is where it should remain.The films considered for this project had to be able to reach large audiences to makean impact on their treatment of science; as such they had to be the products of majorstudios with large distribution capabilities. However, strangely enough, even in the midstof an exciting era biotechnological advances, and even though it might seemcounterintuitive, not many films have been done on genetics, cloning, and even less ongenetic engineering to warrant serious consideration. The films selected for these essayswere written based on research conducted utilizing mainly the online

IMDB

(International Movie Data Base) and the survey on cloning in films written by CraigCormick, manager of

Public Awareness Biotechnology Australia

(Cormick 2006), as well asthe films mentioned in the Wellcome survey. The majority of works that initially seem todeal with the subject, either by a title that points in that direction, such as a film titled

TheClones of Bruce Lee

(1977), or by the inclusion of the words clone, gene, even IVF (in-vitro-fertilization) in a dialog, might deal with scientific topics only in passing, without trulyengaging in the science or the ethics of the utilization of its various technologies, thusfailing miserably at scientific representation or at steering the public in one way or theother, for or against a public understanding of science. Therefore the pieces that have beenselected for analysis had to address scientific topics—possibly giving a scientific “minilesson”—within the coherence of an anecdote, a storyline, and be clearly concerned withan ethical or moral quandary.A film like

Alien: Resurrection

, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (1997) which engages itsheroes for two hours in the killing of highly violent snake-shaped clones engendered froma slimy, sticky, nauseating, outer-space monster is not enough of a situation to warrantconsideration—even if the star in the film is Sigourney Weaver, and she was surrogatemother to the creature—a topic which would have been of great interest to this volumehad it been addressed consistently; serious consideration of the female role in the cloningera is surprisingly absent.Nevertheless, having discarded a number films that did not deal with the subjectconsistently or seriously enough, a group of films emerged that engaged the subject matter

Sophia Vackimes

6

in a thoughtful way; works done by a group of directors who, already having a reputationfor creating landmark films, had approached scientific issues and were now tacklingbiotechnology. In order to adequately consider the issues these films raise as a group, onlyfilms that deal with the nature of being human have been selected; films that are aboutanimals, insects and monsters are generally excluded.

The Fly

(1986), by DavidCronenberg, is an example of the mixing of insect characteristics and human ones in anexperiment that goes wrong. This cinematic piece results in the horrendoustransformation of a human life thus presenting us with a thriller that underscores thenegative effects of an experiment gone wrong directly back on its doer, however, thetreatment itself adds nothing new to the cloning in film discourse.Films that excuse a strand of their plot with a simplistic explanation that includes merekeywords DNA, for example, are generally not considered. At one point in StevenSpielberg’s

ET; The Extra-Terrestrial

(1982) it is determined that the creature has DNA—but such mention functions merely to further elicit the empathy for the strange creaturebut is of no further consequence. Many films use DNA as a keyword or concept to merelyprovide the illusion that the film is engaged with contemporary themes, but in realitymany of these turn out to be action films or comedies constructed from quite arcane plots.These can be characterized simply as: bad guys kill everything in sight plus engage inspectacular car chase scenes, as is the case with

Natural Born Killers

, (1994), directed byOliver Stone and written by Quentin Tarantino, a film that has more to do with bikermovie

Mad Max

(1979) by George Miller, than with anything remotely connected toscience; the same occurs with clones created to substitute for an inferior or unavailablemate,

The Sixth Day

(2000), directed by Roger Spotiswoode, with Arnold Schwarzenegger,or

Multiplicity

(1996), by Harold Ramis, played by Michael Keaton and Andie MacDowell,while the independent film

Teknolust

, (2002) by Lynn Hershmann-Leesom is lamentablyabout a woman scientist who has an unsatisfactory personal life and is a film full ofoutdated cinematic clichés.To sustain the argument that films communicate ideas about science they mustcontain specific scientific

and

cultural discussion; just as a film requires plot consistencyand capacity for transcendence. For example, a film that uses the trope good scientist turnsevil doctor, might refer back to the Faustian legend, but might or might not question theethical dimensions of science. Here it is important to note that the evil scientist can befound in various manifestations and is presently morphing into the evil corporateattorney or success starved CEO, (Chief Executive Officer)—as is the case with

Godsend

,(2004) by Nick Hamm.The quality of the scientific content has been chosen as it shows relevance to thescientific knowledge of the time when the film was produced, and not the time in whichthe action takes place. Films about the far future are as relevant in content as those set inthe present or in the historical past. Fiction, and in this case science fiction has long beena carrier of social commentary. This tradition goes as far back as Aristophanes, when he

Introduction

7

wrote

The Birds

, (414 B.C.E.), a satire in which feathered creatures who were politicallydiscontent with Athenian politics set out to create their own state, and reaches far past ourtime to the intergalactic anti-capitalistic critique of

Blade Runner

by Ridley Scott, (1982);all instances are considered for their presentation of situations as reflective of socialdimension, commentary or metaphorical activities (Nerlich 2001:37). The dates ofproduction for the majority of the films included illustrate a coincidence with widercultural reactions to the announcement of the cloning of frogs by Gurdon and Uehlingerof 1966, the live birth of the cloned ewe Dolly by scientists at the

Roslyn Institute

inScotland during 1995, or the proposed legislation to ban the cloning of humans byAmerican President Clinton which also occurred that year. At the same time, while manyof the films reflect anxieties directed towards the work of contemporary science, they canalso point to historical events. This is doubly the case with

The Boys From Brazil

, which isdirectly linked to the Gurdon and Uehlinger announcement—a former student ofGurdon’s is the film’s science consultant—while it also comments on the eugenicexperiments of the Nazi period.Because of the different approach to the subject each of the films takes they will bediscussed individually as to best highlight their content. Although the literary productionon clones of the 1970’s can be seen as a corpus that focuses on attitudes towards the natureof the individual human being, and can be categorized as “the first boom of science fictionnovels about cloning” (Brandt 2007:37), the films in this selection span more than fourdecades, and illustrate long-lasting and widely diverging preoccupations with the subjectat times paralleling other social issues as is the case with the multicultural discourse of theUnited States during the 1980’s and early 1990’s.Films by well-known directors, who in one way or another are readily recognized asmasters of their trade turned out to be the most important part of the mix. These worksare complemented by works by younger, emerging creators whose cinematographicproduction is not yet complete but is nevertheless already significant and which addsspecific elements to the mosaic regarding genetics and film this project seeks to illustrate.In some instances the films selected are remakes of previous films which in turn have beennovels taken to the screen and adapted as commentaries on modern biotechnology.What is finally the purpose of looking at these films and hopefully what is conveyed inthrough their analysis via these essays is the exposure ofthe twin faces of our unconscious meditation on the inevitable mutation on theinevitable mutations a now repressed history has in store for us: fear and hope alike,the loathing for the new beings we ourselves are bound to become in the sheddingof the skins of all our current values, intimately intertwined, as in some DNA of thecollective fantasy, with our quasi-religious longing for social transubstantiation intoanother flesh and another reality (Jameson 1992:29).

Sophia Vackimes

8

Works cited

Brandt, Christina2007 Clone Figures: Literary Representations in the 1960’s and 1970’s.Corliss, Richard1994 The Man Behind the Monster. In Time. New York.Cormick, Craig2006 Cloning Goes to the Movies. Historia, Ciencias, Saude 13:181-212.Jameson, Fredric1992 The Geopolitical Aesthetic; Cinema and Space in the World System. Indiana andLondon: Indiana University Press and BFI Publishing.Klotzko, Arlene Judith1998 Dolly, Cloning, and the Public Misunderstanding of Science: A Challenge for Us All.Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 7:115-16.Nerlich, Brigitte, David D. Clarke, Robert Dinwall2001 Fictions, Fantasies, and Fears: The Literary Foundations of the Cloning Debate.Journal of Literary Semantics: 37-52.Shepherd, Richard, Julie Barnett, Helen Cooper et al.2007 Towards an Understanding of British Public Attitudes Concerning Human Cloning.Social Science & Medicine 65:277-392.Wellcome1998 Public Perspectives on Human Cloning. Pp. 44. London: Wellcome Trust.

9

Children Made to Order

During the second week of September 1997 various newspapers across the United Statescontained full-page ads for a genetic enhancement company called

Gattaca

that promised“Children Made to Order”. Below the photograph of a plump baby appeared a list of traitsprospective parents could choose or eliminate in a child: characteristics such as obesity,criminally aggressive tendencies, musical abilities, intellect, gender, stature, eye color, skincolor and an assortment of inheritable diseases. The add contained a toll free number tocall for additional information and had captions that read: “How far will you go? How farwill your child go?” and added “[t]here has never been a better way to bring a child intothe world. At

Gattaca

, it is now possible to engineer your offspring” (Vogel 1997:1753).The ad was not about a real company, but rather about a film to be released during themonth of October;

Gattaca

, directed by Andrew Niccol, is a film that deals with themanipulation of human genes (Niccol 1997). It tells the story of a man called Vincent wholives in a world where genetic engineering is the norm. Born without the advantages ofsuch technology, he is deemed a degenerate, a social misfit. Vincent dreams of being anastronaut, and applies himself diligently to the study of aeronautics and cosmography, buthis expectations are crushed as qualifying examinations for job training and otheractivities demand biometric screening. He eventually utilizes a genetic broker to procuresuperior genetic material from a man called Jerome, who once was a star swimmer, and isnow confined to a wheelchair because of a broken back. With Jerome’s genetic material—

Sophia Vackimes

10

hair, dandruff, blood, urine—which he carries around in vials, catheters, and otherprosthetics—Vincent manages to infiltrate the

Gattaca

space program, and qualify for atour to Titan, one of Jupiter’s satellites. The film ends in a climax that goes through a fewtense scenes because a murder occurs at the program, and the protagonist becomes theprime suspect. Yes, there is a girl in the story too; he falls in love with her, they have sex,he leaves for the stars.The film was not far fetched in its scientific views as it dealt with issues that geneticresearchers were discussing at the time; plausible developments in the field of genetics. Atthe first

Gene Therapy Policy Conference

sponsored by the

Recombinant DNA AdvisoryCommittee

(RAC) of the

National Institutes of Health

(NIH) scientists predicted thatwithin two years gene-therapy experiments initially aimed at curing disease, couldeventually be used to enhance a trait in healthy people (Vogel 1997:1753). Surprisinglyand in contrast to other films of the genre, it wasn’t exactly about science fiction, butrather about current science: more science and less fantasy (Marsen 2004:149).Although considered to be a science fiction film—with a visually attractive and evensuave design that is a departure from the gory elements that characterize films of thisgenre—it does not confront problematic scientific issues but actually endorses them. Thegene as cultural icon (Lindee and Nelkin 1995) appears unequivocally throughout thefilm, and of all the films on genetic engineering to date, it is perhaps the most successfulin portraying easily recognizable references to the double helix. Most importantly,completed at the end of the so-called Science Wars, it successfully underwent variousscreenings aimed at experts in genetic engineering in order to certify that the film depictedthe science it portrayed correctly (Science Vol 278 Nov. 1997).The set design by Jan Roelfs helped set the tone of the movie through a minimalist stylewhere nature has been submitted to totalitarian control; there is also a great deal of flatnessin the human characters, their reactions to their futuristic circumstances are akin to thatof cyborgs found in other films. With the creation of a

retro

feel the film places itself—witha look composed of aerodynamically designed automobiles, and several views of FrankLloyd Wright’s

Contra Costa County Municipal Center—

in a transitional space betweenthe fifties and sixties, which corresponds to the beginning of the Cold War—and in a spaceprogram that sought to demonstrate American superiority in science. The film wasdesigned with blend of styles that paradoxically utilized retro objects such automobilesfrom the sixties blended with contemporary scientific iconography. The film received

anAcademy Award Nomination for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration

(Imdb 2000). In a twistto the usual ethos of the genre, although the narrative on its surface appears to critique thework of science, it actually reinforces the predominant status genetics has in society—while it perverts the image of the hero, and while it has always been the prime function ofmythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, this film,in counteraction to constant human yearnings ties the human spirit back (Campbell1949:11).

Children Made to Order

11

In opposition to what a

real

hero would do; save himself to save mankind, here, themain character apparently despises but actually covets belonging to a world ruled bygenetic engineering. His mind never cuts radically from the attitudes, attachments and lifepatterns of the stage left behind; he does not bestow any benefit to mankind, but achieveshis own and very narrow American dream (Flury 2004:1356). If it seems otherwise, it isbecause the film cleverly manipulates signs on the narrative level as opposed to thenarrative we hear (Marsen 2004:144).

Hooked on DNA

Genetic imagery is not only a short-cut to the public understanding of science but actuallyreifies the qualities of the gene as a cultural icon (Lindee and Nelkin 1995).

Messages thatreinforce the status of genetic engineering in our society are articulated via its mostobvious icons; the initial letters for the proteins Guanine, Thymime, Adenine andCytosine, which make up the DNA molecule, and give the movie its name and thehighlighted initials in the movie’s credits. Visually, as a model, the DNA molecule appearsas part of the set design—the staircase in Jerome’s apartment being the most obvious, andthe toy the child Vincent plays with in the scene at the eugenics clinic. We also see itreinterpreted in architectural features such as the slits of the incinerator in which Jeromecommits suicide. On a metaphoric level the story’s script is composed of various pairings,similar to those exemplifying the activity of recombinant DNA; for example, Vincentmoves through the story in couplings first with his brother, then Jerome, and later Irene.As parallel metaphor we hear Esperanto, the artificially created international language,broadcasted over a loudspeaker at

Gattaca—

even the melody for the movie’s theme

Nuages

composed by minimalist Michael Nyman is made out of four notes.All of these instances of images/objects reify the auratic quality of the gene as culturalsymbol

Gattaca

“black boxes” questionable issues about science and asks us to abandonall knowledge about knowledge (Latour 1987:7) concerning the risks inherent in many ofthe applications of genetic engineering. While the main character initially resents suchpractices, he does not truly critique eugenics, but he ultimately adopts it. The film craftilyconstructs the illusion that an individual can succeed in challenging adverse, eventotalitarian circumstances, while he tacitly accepts social determinism; science fictionfilms like this one provide useful means to framing our relationships to new technologies(Kirby 2004:185).In

Gattaca

we witness how an individual in a brave new world acts with a brave newmentality. Vincent “wants a better deal in his society, but does not intend to destroy orchange that society” (Marsen 2004:156) his story is illustrative of a highly particular andindividualistic quest, but not that of a hero. How he deals with the situation, with hisidentity change, is clearly expressed by Vincent in the scene with the DNA broker:

Sophia Vackimes

12

VINCENT: For all my brave talk, I knew it was just that. No matter how much Itrained and how much I studied, the best test score in the world was not going tomatter unless I had the blood test to go with it. I made up my mind to resort to moreextreme measures.What Vincent does as a character is “serve as catalyst in the dismantling of outmodeddefinitions of identity” (Marsen 2004:141). Vincent breaks all sorts of rules to become anaccepted member of his society, and in the end, though he accomplishes his dream totravel to space, he is ethically not a better individual than those around him. Thesequences in the movie in which he passes off urine and blood prosthetics as thoseproduced by his body in order to cheat the system are potent in their simplicity andresourcefulness, but by the time he reaches his goal he has scrubbed himself clean ofhimself. “[W]hile Vincent grows stronger ... Eugene is gradually humbled, depleted,degraded” (Jeffreys 2001:147); if we still feel any sympathy for Vincent after all thescraping, scrubbing, peeling, urinating, and essentially feeding off from someone else’sbody—a clear example of parasitism—it is because the film succeeds in its manipulationand creation of “semantic contradictions” (Marsen 2004:152). The film takes hold of theviewer’s perceptions as it displays an uncomfortable new reality where even if Vincentcould be considered some sort of ethically mutating underdog who ironically bears thename of victory, however, to be sure, he is no Spartacus; he gives nothing in return tosociety (Flury 2004:1356). The hero pattern evoked by the story has become perverted bya new form of narrative; “

GATTACA

undermines the very basis of genetic discriminationand the boundary between unmodified and modified” (Kirby 2004:190).

Brave New Choices

The film has key scenes that illustrate how medical decisions are made which determinethe fate of the film’s players. One such is set in a fancy laboratory office where Marie andAntonio, Vincent’s parents, receive information about genetic selection. Seeking to avoidthe mistake they made in naturally conceiving a first child—the protagonist—they haveresorted to be on the safe side with a second one. However, whatever wishes they mightinitially have about the way they wanted their future child to be, once they enter thissetting they rely on medicine’s methods and tools. By entering the clinic they have alreadyde facto consented to bow to eugenics, and, during their visit linguistic tools arearticulated to gain their consent to genetically engineer their second son. Besides receivingmedical advice—a socially trusted source of information on the human body—it isdifficult to contradict the conveyor. Initially his data it is designed to deliver answers tospecific questions; but beyond answering them, he uses the data

to predict

abstractsituations,

to qualify

issues laden with social values.Genetic tests rely on an “aura of precision and scientific objectivity that enhances theircredibility” (Nelkin and Tancredi 1994:23), and such aura has allowed genetic

Children Made to Order

13

information to gain substantial social prominence and exaggerated credence. In the filmwe see how this inflamed information falls onto fertile ground as the first child isconsidered faulty both physically and symbolically—a disgrace to his father’s name. By thetime the parents make a second parental choice they are fully dependent on medical tests,tools that “create social categories, negotiate social arrangements, and enhance the controlof certain groups over others” (Nelkin and Tancredi 1994:18). The persuasiveness ofscientific information, the uneven weight given to other considerations pushes a decisiontowards the shaky ground of fragile assumptions. In real life medical information isabused constantly even to the point of demonstrating teleological relations betweenanatomical structure and physiological function (Harcourt cited in Waldby 2000:117).Although the medical establishment has tried to disassociate itself from old eugenicpractices and historical condemnation, in practice there are tensions betweenunderstanding its present logic and aims. Even though associations with eugenics, forexample, are avoided in the current literature relating to genetic engineering, the logicbehind it persists and is refueled by evidence from diagnostic tests justified in terms ofhealth for humanity at large. The acceptance of eugenic measures has been disastroushistorically, and might again lead down a dangerous road even though many still contendthat the impact of genetic engineering on family planning is still far off in the future it isquite with us now.The constant framing and reframing of medicine as capable of solving all sorts ofhuman frailties puts it in a unique and unencumbered position among the sciences; itinculcates an idealized mental picture in the public mind of what it can do for society, afavorable imago (Van Djik 1998) that has been laboriously crafted over centuries, andintensified of late. In the exaggerated bio “euphoria” with which it is represented today,its achievements become attached to a perfectibility ideal which “is a crude and sometimesperverse way of promoting desirable goals” (Sunstein 2005:34).Rationalizing eugenic medicine we hear Vincent, the protagonist, narrate thecircumstances of his birth: he relates how his mother relied on chance or nature, as factorin her pregnancy, and therefore the outcome of the health of her son was compromised.That decision, we are told, and witness, had grave consequences for Vincent, renderinghim unacceptable to the society into which he was born. Interwoven in the storyline areall the tools needed to work out an assessment of the feasibility of genetic engineering suchas testing, tweaking with the genetic makeup of a second son and the consequent fixing/production of what a human being should be in order to conform to modern expectationsthat fall into the rank of eugenic practices derived from the negotiation of risk and benefit.The information/propaganda behind the decoding of the human genome projectpromises all sort of cures to human ailments which are played out in the scene at the

Eighth Day Clinic

whose name implies a possibility that is better than Western religiouscreation, even when leading scientists recognize that such promise it “ain’t necessarily so”(Lewontin 2000).

Sophia Vackimes

14

The Eighth Day Clinic

When the conversation begins, the couple states clearly that all they expect from theprocedure is a male child to play with their older son, but when they leave the clinic theyhave ordered a genetically modified embryo. What happens in the course of thetransaction/conversation that brings about such radical changes?VINCENT (voice-over) Like most other parents of their day, they were determinedthat their next child would be brought into the world in what has become thenatural way ...CLINICIAN: Your extracted eggs, Marie, have been fertilized with Antonio’s sperm.After screening we are left, as you see, with two healthy boys and two very healthygirls. Naturally no critical predispositions to any of the major inheritable diseases ...All that remains is to select the most compatible candidate. First of all, we may aswell decide on gender. Have you given it any thought?MARIE: We would want Vincent to have a brother, you know, to play with ...CLINICIAN: Of course ... Hello Vincent ...You have specified hazel eyes, brown hairand fair skin ... I have taken the liberty of eradicating any potentially prejudicialconditions, premature baldness, myopia, alcoholism and addictive susceptibilities;a propensity for violence ... obesity ... etc.MARIE: We didn’t want ... diseases yes, but ...ANTON: Right, were just wondering if it’s good to just leave a few things up tochance.Actuarial thinking was designed for and is primarily used to derive risk and benefit in theinsurance industry. It is a cost assessment tool that attempts to lend answers to problemsof potential risk, medical procedures and hospitalization—even end of life care. Whilebeneficial to an enormous industry on economic terms, its related tendency however, is toreduce these problems to biological or medical terms (Nelkin and Tancredi 1994:9)masking all other issues and risks. The actuarial mind calculates costs and outcomes inorder to determine economic benefits and constraints; the system relies on a set of toolsthat supply it with information to be processed economically. For example, it calculatesfrom the amount of people who work at offices and sit at a desk over six hours a day, howmany will develop back pain, how much money the treatment to remedy the pain will cost,and how much will be covered by insurance. However, as in any human system, whilesuch a tool might be useful in some situations, particularly those needing complexstatistical and population assessments, it is a devastating proposition individuals.When people such as Marie and Anton calculate complex risks they rely on a certainheuristics, rules of thumb, to simplify their inquiry in order to arrive at a decision; througha process of attribute substitution people answer a hard question by substituting it for aneasier one (Sunstein 2005:36). The couple’s simple quest to conceive a second child gets

Children Made to Order

15

complicated immensely as they listen to the attendant who states that he has taken on theliberty to eliminate baldness, myopia, common medical conditions which areimmediately followed by more complex issues such as alcoholism. Here, momentarily, thecouple manages to voice an objection, but their concern is countered with the objective/precise determinations made by the scientific establishment.At this point, Can Vincent’s parents properly asses the value of the genetic informationpassed down through natural conception? Are they really able to or allowed to do so in thissituation? Hardly. The doctor reifies their fear of an unfortunate second outcomecountering any objection they have by emphasizing the great qualities that the geneticallyengineered offspring will have. The medical information available is manipulated into aframework that creates equivalences between data, parameters of illness and socialdeviancy; information that takes advantage of an emotional situation.Arguments for eugenics are also made in films such as

Godsend

by Nick Hamm, 2004and

Cloned

Douglass Barr, 1997. Once natural conception is equated to a high probabilityof abnormal outcomes the data acquires concrete undesirable qualities. In

Gattaca

as thedoctor speaks, he gives what is on the surface benign advice while promoting goals thatencourage a new order of things, and as he embodies medical aura and utilizes it to tilt thedecision towards genetic determinism. Marie and Anton agree with him, and thereforewillingly coalesce with eugenic practices.Taking this further we see that “sometimes a certain risk is said to call for precautionsis cognitively available, whereas other risks, including those associated with regulationitself are not” (Sunstein 2005:37). Probability neglect leads people to focus on the worstcase scenario put before them even if its occurrence is highly improbable “in the contextof genetic modification ... the same phenomenon is at work” (Sunstein 2005:40). As theevocation of potential illness is powerful, reality is relinquished in favor of a decision thatallays the disastrous imagery enunciated. Framed by Vincent’s own words as he reflectedback on his parents’ decision, we are told that acting like most parents of their time he wasconceived in “the natural way”—a way where “ten fingers ten toes, were all that used tomatter”. However what hovers over his parents’ mind at the clinic is the disastrousprognosis, read out by the nurse when Vincent was born:NURSE: Neurological condition 60% probability; manic depression 42%probability, attention deficit disorder 89% probability, heart disorder ... 99%probability, early fatal potential, life expectancy 30.2 years.As the parents sit in the clinic making “conscious decisions” they refer back to thisnegative prognosis and make their new choices. The overwhelming dictum that theprevious child will only survive to be “30 years” dictates their logic. It is indeed hard toimagine that parents would actually stick to their initial desire to “leave a few things tochance” in view of the latent catastrophe embedded in Vincent’s genes; moreover recent

Sophia Vackimes

16

events have a great impact on decision making (Sunstein 2005:37). Dealing with a childthat is considered sickly, and the salience of the additional negative social implicationsplus the vivid imagery enunciated by the doctor in phrases like ... “I have taken the libertyof eradicating any potentially prejudicial condition” bring to fore a mental repertoireconstructed socially around conjectures which stunt the ability to make clear judgements.As the worst-case scenario predominates the decision leans towards uncertain territory;objections are brushed aside and sealed with words of emotional blackmail:CLINICIAN: Believe me, we already have enough built in imperfection already, thechild does not need additional burdens.When distressed, people perceive losses as looming larger than gains (Sunstein 2005:41).Even with tools at their disposal to gauge and monitor a second pregnancy more closelyMarie and Anton will not be comfortable with their situation and engage in a “full swingof emotions” (Sunstein 2005:39) that creates panic in their minds and that ultimately pullsthem towards an outer edge of the decision-making spectrum. They wind up caught up ina more extreme situation than they initially bargained for since they paid more attentionto risk factors than they paid attention to the general well-being of the child. They arediscouraged from allowing the randomness in nature to take place, and discard safeground through a series of steps that begin with natural conception in favor of what theyperceive to be favorable alternatives.The condemnation given by negative data is sealed with the last statement in the scene;uttered by the eager genetic advisor who closes off any possibility of objection by theprospective parents. They then engage in one more point of the actuarial mindset; systemneglect. Here, after being reproached by the practitioner, they fail to see that in a systemconnections can be affected by quick one-shot cure-all choices (Sunstein 2005:45). If thispolished conversation initially seemed of little consequence it is clearly and quitecompellingly illustrative of a set of choices made when slipping down the slippery sloperegarding decisions about genetic engineering. The complexity of dealing with such avariety of genetic possibilities and permutations is enormous; in oversimplifying adecision through availability heuristics Vincent’s parents react emotionally to a situationignoring how their actions will affect their child as a whole.There is shortsightedness in the assumption that genetic alterations truly are about aone to one genetic equivalence to diseases. In some cases this still seems to be the case, butaside from Tay Sachs, cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, hemophilia, muscular dystrophy,few other diseases to date have been found to operate based on the malfunctioning/mutation of a single gene. The system operates in a much more complex manner involvinga series of genes to make up one single symptom. As the decision is made to give the childcertain characteristics, or to phase out others, the assumption is made that the system as awhole will go along with the alterations.

Children Made to Order

17

Impeccable ...

When the story begins, we actually join Vincent in the midst of his new identity. What welearn about his—via the autodiegetic narration—that he tried up to a point to doeverything possible to succeed as a natural human being, but then moved on to passinghimself off as a genetically superior being by acquiring identity materials through anunscrupulous bio-broker or blade runner—someone dealing in the black market ofmedical equipment. As he does so, his identity is no longer human; he becomespostmodern, a being with an identity as a “multiplicity of disconnected selves joined by afalse narrative of biographical unity” (Merleau cited in Marsen 2004:155). Vincent makesdecisions based on the very same availability heuristics that his parents adopted in hisgenetic engineering, and which we are made to assume, are those adopted by the parentsof all of those beings that surround him. What he rationalizes in his narrative, as his newpersona, his passport into

Gattaca

, is the genetic material of a man of whom the brokerstates:GERMAN: His credentials are impeccable, an expiration date you wouldn’t believe.The guy’s practically going to live forever. He’s got an IQ off the register. Better than20/20 in both eyes; and the heart of an ox. He could run through a wall ... if he couldstill run. Actually, he was a big time swimming star. Vincent, you can go anywherewith this guy’s helix tucked under your arm ... As far as anyone is concerned he isstill a walking, talking, fully productive member of society. You just have to get himclean, and fill in the last year of his life ...They don’t care where you were born, justhow ... blood has no nationality, as long as it’s got what you are looking for it’s theonly passport you need.In accepting this proposal he buys into the very same system that left him out in the firstplace—the system his parents chose later on for his brother. In accepting suchcircumstances Vincent does not “by opposing end” the odious that made him marginal,circumstances that he initially resented, but rather co-opts them. He illustrates how theonly way to succeed is to join the wave of the future; eugenics.As he feels defeated in his pursuit of accomplishing his goals, by “miswanting” whatdoes not promote his welfare; his preferences do not reflect his autonomy (Sunstein2005:154). Therefore he too makes assumptions and calculations based on the availabilityheuristic, and goes through with the scheme of utilizing someone else’s genetic material ashis own. By attaching himself first to opinions of the broker, and then to a relationship toJerome, Vincent engages in a climate of fear festered by the claims of a third person whoalso “moves him to a more extreme direction” than what he had originally planned(Sunstein 2005:101). The ensuing emotional contagion with Jerome, and his disabledcondition, and the self-confidence bred by the extremism of his decisions are allsymptomatic of a decision-making sought by “people who want to be perceived favorably

Sophia Vackimes

18

by other group members, and also to perceive themselves favorably” (Sunstein 2005:100).And so, with the aid of someone else’s genetic materials he “overcomes” his geneticmakeup. Is he truly successful? Or humanly better for doing so? Perhaps that is debatable,but one thing is clear; the film is not about protagonists renegotiating their individualposition in the existing state of affairs, but rather about the reification of a new way ofthinking (Marsen 2004:156). “It is not only that there is no hiding place for the gods fromthe searching telescope and microscope; there is no such society any more as the gods oncesupported” (Campbell 1949:317).

Conclusion

Is there anything truly heroic about Vincent? Initially it seems that what makes the moviework out with Vincent traveling to Saturn, as was his dream, is that a man, made out to bethe embodiment of imperfection takes on a contrary way of thinking about his body andhis supposed/real limitations. Because we are used to a narrative formula where anunderdog comes out victorious at the end, his quest appears initially successful. The moviehas all the accoutrements of the heroic genre, including a lovely young woman, sex, and ahappy and romantic ending. But he never rejects the actuarial mindset prevailing in hissociety, or for that matter, any of the genetic discrimination tools available to its membersin his quest—including his own brother, who turns out to be the detective trying todiscover who committed the murder at

Gattaca

. Quite the contrary; he engages a shadydealer, and travels to Saturn utilizing someone else’s identity in a film that reifies a newway of thinking about the body. With this in mind, it is striking that the film has beenaccepted to be “a common reference point in discussions about human-gene alteringtechnologies” used “by educators in a wide variety of classrooms, from junior high schoolthrough graduate school and from biology to English, to help teach about the bioethics ofgenetic technologies” (Kirby 2004:187). No wonder, it is a film that is favored by peopleinvolved with science.Anti-human art contributes to the way in which the real body, and its real presence,are menaced by various kinds of virtual presence (Virilio 2003:2), one of which is geneticengineering.

Gattaca

makes the public believe Vincent is a hero and is constructed tocreate the illusion that a crafty individual can succeed in challenging discriminatory,extremely adverse or totalitarian circumstances while setting up the main plot as asimplistic discourse of binary oppositions; good mankind/evil technology. In reality, suchoversimplification does not only hide the real ideological direction of the film, but these“discourses about reality, self and identity point to new directions of thought whereontological truth and causality are no longer central” (Marsen 2004:142). The story of thehero is exploited via the use of the stock structures of American cinematic melodrama,and the vision of a director that makes us root for disadvantaged characters “who exposethe injustice of the system and are the

most real

” (Krentz 2004:194 my emphasis), while

Children Made to Order

19

the main character, Vincent/Victory, realizes his dream with the aid of illegal and evendevious methods; identifying with a character as his, prevents an analysis of his realintentions. In the end, what he covets is the acceptance into the world belonging toanother class of social beings—one that reminds some of us perhaps of unscrupulousCEO’s. It is clear that that class of beings has already done away with ethics, however,“[o]nce gene therapy shows its first success ... broader applications will not be far behind”(Vogel 1997:1754).Today, as characters renegotiate their boundaries there is no recourse to identificationto heroes as members of a class with which to combat the onslaught of new technologies.“

GATTACA

undermines the very basis of genetic discrimination and the boundarybetween unmodified and modified” (Kirby 2004:190), and misleads the public intothinking that there is hope for individuals in the combat of the intrusion of newtechnologies into the most intimate parts of their bodies. “Genomes with their networksof interactions and their multiplicity of meanings leave us free to use our imagination aswe read them” (Pollack 1994:152-53), however, in this case the creator of the film hasconstructed and manipulated specific cultural messages where “the science of genetics hasbecome a spectacle, a source of multiple metaphors and provocative visual images”(Anker and Nelkin 2004:1). Perhaps we are about to enter an era where heroes don’tmatter, and where, even though we might still want to believe we can defeat adversecircumstances we will be engaging with eugenics “by the back door” (Duster 1900:112).

, 1978, was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, a director well knownfor films such as

The Planet of the Apes

, 1968, Patton, 1970, Nicholas and Alexandra, 1972,and Papillon, 1973, among others. From a formal standpoint this film in particular is adifficult fit into what we now recognize as science fiction for it does not have any of thefantastical aesthetic resources so common to the genre; sophisticated set designs in inter-galactic space, futuristic costumes and gadgets, or even alien creatures to contend with. Itdoes fit, however, into the perspective of the present volume because it fulfills animportant—even unique—space in the genetics and science in film continuum, providingus with a key to the void between the unassayable and the unsayable; it works as a placeand theme of testimony, erected for future cartographers of new ethical territory to orientthemselves (Agamben 2002:13).The film, is usually described from an overly critical perspective that tends to be harsh;hardly a piece worthy to have been nominated for three Academy Awards; best acting, forLaurence Olivier in the leading role, best film editing and best original music score.However, as a film commenting on the work of science, it is full of uncanny surprises. Itis based on the novel of the same name by Ira Levin, author of two other stories made intonotable films: The Stepford Wives, directed by Bryan Forbes, (1975), and Rosemary’s Baby,by Roman Polanski, (1968), which touch upon issues—albeit quite distinctly posed—thatin one way or other consider the transmission of evil. The Stepford Wives, is about asuburban community of housewives who lived their lives seemingly inspired by feministideals but who eventually succumb to conformity, as if bewitched into becoming perfectSophia Vackimes24spouses; Rosemary’s Baby, a cinematic masterpiece, is the story of an urban upper middleclass woman who gives birth to the devil’s child. The Boys From Brazil also deals with evil,and while the plot is entirely different, it engages, just as in Rosemary’s Baby, heritablecharacteristics.The Levin/Schaffner film’s plot is as follows: A young Jewish man, idealistic and naive,is tracking down the activities of former Nazis living in Central America. He runs acrossthe preparations of a grand meeting between Doctor Joseph Mengele—until thensuspected to have gone underground in Latin America after he fled Germany— other highranking ex-Nazi officials and a generation of younger zealous followers. Barry Koehler,playing the hero, tries to communicate this information to Ezra Liebermann—whosecharacter is modeled after Simon Wiesenthal, the celebrated real-life Nazi hunter.Liebermann lives in Vienna with his sister. Barry calls Liebermann and relates to him whathe overhead during a secret meeting in Paraguay; in the course of two years 94 male civilservants around 65 years old with families and living in countries such as Canada, theUnited States, Germany and Switzerland are to be murdered by Josef Mengele’s followers.If initially Liebermann is not interested in the information given to him, he eventuallygets involved with the matter and starts trying to figure out what the men to be murderedmight have in common. He begins his investigation by visiting the families to bedisastrously struck by the murderous plotters, and he finds that the single male child inone family is similar to that of another one, and then, yet another. Baffled by the children’sidentical features—specially their piercing blue eyes—he struggles to understand why theyare so similar. In confusion and despair, he eventually reaches out to a scientist whoexplains a state of the art scientific concept: cloning. Liebermann eventually realizes thatMengele’s plot entails not only of the creation of Adolf Hitler’s biological replicas, but alsothe re-creation of his life experiences for their development. Being the son of a civil servantwho died as he reached 9 years of age, a mother much younger than the father who isoverly affectionate and doting towards her son, plus birthdates that coincide with Hitler’s,are situations Mengele carefully plotted to reproduce in order to successfully bring up theclones—or at least one of them—as new Führer.∗Walter Benjamin, regarding the discussion photography vs. film, considered that muchfruitless ingenuity is spent on the question of whether or not the later is an art. Rather, heclarified, the fundamental question is whether or not cinema had transformed the entirecharacter of artistic perception and fulfilled new social functions. He concluded that asmass media it is most intimately related to the social movements of our day and is theirmost powerful agent (Benjamin 2002:254-58). Cinema is a spectacle that brings togetherand explains a wide range of apparently disparate phenomena (Debord 1994:14). To itsBlue Eyed Boys25functions we can add the importance of overlapping historical material—even if in a workof fiction the information presented is somewhat stretched.The Boys of Brazil must be given credit for being the only major release film that hasbecome part of the perpetual commentary on testimony (Agamben 2002:13) on theShoah. The film makes the connection between unethical medicine/genetics and the Naziera, a link generally missing from the cinematic experience and an item hotly contested inthe history of science: that is, the state of the genetic science at the time of the SecondWorld War. Even if it is highly unlikely that someone would attempt to clone Hitlerninety-four times, Mengele did pursue genetic research while at Auschwitz engaging intwin research—he amassed as many samples of human abnormalities as possible—whichhe hoped would eventually lead to his habilitation; German requirement for a universityposition.One has to concede that it does however, take a certain amount of creativity torecombine a story from two strands that are initially so disparate, but here credit is due tothe novel’s author, Ira Levin, who had kept up with enough scientific information to makehis story plausible. In the novel, Doctor Josef Mengele is described as a person who alsostays up to date with scientific information that is consistent with his scholarly aspirations,even though he never achieved his goal of securing a university post after Auschwitz.However, some of his research is regarded—either by oversight or admiration—wellenough by those academicians who have used his work—and that of other Nazi doctors—as worthy of being included—that is academically cited—in contemporary scientificwriting (Seidelman 1988:228-30). The Mengele of the novel and the film is someoneabsolutely determined to succeed in his scientific pursuits; he knows enough aboutcurrent science to dismiss a bad article on genetics and mentioning cloned frogs instead,something John Gurdon and Verena Uehlinger had accomplished in 1966.Despite the accidents and excesses the film indulges in, such as a dramatic build-upthat leads to Mengele’s destruction by a band of ferocious dobermans commanded by oneof the Hitler clones—who well, as we all expected, did indeed turn out to be an evil child—mixing facts and fiction is something that gave the science-fiction genre the best of twoworlds. Its main purpose, when H.G. Wells wrote about evolutionary theory, or whenJules Verne wrote about travel to the center of the earth, was to take our imagination toplaces and situations into which we could not otherwise venture, such as back in time, orthe far side of the moon, but it was always and foremost an enthralling intellectualexercise. The connections between science and fiction—what is possible and what is not—are not always easy to make. Ira Levin’s novel proves to be not only a powerful evocationof the power of understanding and failing to understand, or rather being willing or not tomake connections—a willingness and the courage to confront history and stare into theunsayable—just as it was difficult for many to understand what had gone on inconcentration camps—the Allies who found a handful of emaciated survivors at the portalof death, or filmmakers in places like México or the German citizenry eventuallySophia Vackimes26confronted with the horrible facts of war—which in horrific irony was the name given bythe Nazis to Sector B III from where numerous subjects were then taken to Mengele’sexperimental laboratory. What is irrefutable is that in face of the facts the possibility ofunderstanding is voluntary. It is ironic, if not extraordinary, that in the novel and the film,it is the Jew himself, Ezra Lieberman who gets intellectually stuck, and can’t put togetherthe pieces of the puzzle he is given to solve.Notwithstanding, Lieberman makes an all out effort to understand. He runs aroundseveral countries, conducting interviews with recently widowed women who he finds havestrangely similar offspring, trying to figure out why or how it is possible that children fromdifferent families can be so strikingly alike, or what relationship they would have toMengele. It is then that he seeks help—in the novel he receives advice from younguniversity students—from a scientist who explains how it is possible for several humanbeings to share so many common characteristics; and so, Lieberman learns about cloning.The fellow scientist that speaks with him is clear; cloning is no longer something in therealm of science fiction. It is a process being perfected; something that can eventually bedone with a well preserved skin specimen from someone who does not necessarily need tobe alive. Suddenly, Lieberman understands what he is up against. In an ironical twist thatfilm fans love to talk about, the actor interpreting the scientist is Bruno Ganz, who, a fewyears later was to perform one of the best roles of his career; Adolf Hitler in Der Untergang,(The Fall) 2004.The scene during which cloning is explained is a remarkable example of a mise enabisme where the state of genetic science of the seventies and the cinematic concessionsmade in the name of a fiction film are presented. In a film within a film scientificdemonstrations and a craftily put together narrative are advanced by a Doctor Bruchnerplayed by Ganz. This scene’s construction can be attributed to the work of Derek Bromhallwho is given scientific advisory credit at the beginning of the film, and who was at onepoint a student of Gurdon’s. Bromhall, who was the plaintiff in the famous “boy clonehoax” of the early 1980’s1, crafted an explanation that is sound and whose only scientific“mistake” is nevertheless a culturally consistent explanation of how character traits aretransmitted from one generation to another, that is, via bloodlines2.∗Films on the Shoah have paid homage to the millions of individuals victimized atconcentration and death camps, and the variation in treatment of the subject is immense.31Derek Bromhall ﬁled a $7 million defamation suit against author David. M. Rorvik and his publisher forhaving cited him and his work in the book titled In His Image: The Cloning of a Man.2I am indebted to Christina Brandt and to Edna Maria Suarez Diaz for a wonderfully insightfulconversation on this scene and cloning in the seventies. The discussion about the mistake consists onconsidering whether or not the blood cells implanted into an egg that has previously had its own nucleusdestroyed is a red or white cell, and whether or not that choice was viable.Blue Eyed Boys27For example: Un Specialiste, 1999, was composed from footage taken at the Eichmann trialin Jerusalem; Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah, 1985, is a masterpiece done from survivor’saccounts of the events; a montage titled The Maelstrom; A Family Portrait, of 1997, wasassembled by Péter Forgács from Dutch amateur films of Peereboom family taken duringthe nineteen forties; The Himmler Project, by Romuald Karmakar, produced during 1999-2000 is a literal reading of documents containing Nazi delusions of grandeur. Nuit etBrouillard, (Night and Fog) 1955, by Alain Resnais is a touching, even chillingly poeticpiece filmed at Auschwitz and complemented with footage of some of its survivors takenby Allied forces. Les statues meurent aussi, (The Statues Die This Way) 1953, by ChrisMarker and Alain Resnais, indirectly examines the issue of genocide in the context ofFrench colonialism through a cinematic exercise that juxtaposed mass killings to genocidein Africa. Guernica, also by Alain Resnais is a poignant piece where a poem by Paul Éluardwas superimposed onto the graven black and white Picasso canvas. Ostnapi Etap (The LastStage) 1948, was created by concentration camp survivor turned director WandaJakubowska; it began as a jarring account of life in the female barracks of Auschwitz andended with the promise of communism as the resolution to the story. La Vita è Bella, 1998,by Italian writer, actor and director Roberto Benigni, aroused controversy with a comedytreatment of the subject. In turn, Roman Polanski’s, The Pianist, 2002, paid attention tothe disarray amongst Jews themselves that would make them into easy victims.∗Schindler’s List, 1993, by Steven Spielberg, the Shoah blockbuster, was filmed during atime of exacerbated American protectionism towards the state of Israel and resulted in aportrayal of events that are nothing less than a reversal of what occurred to the majorityof Jews that went to concentration camps. This Zionywood account of the events is astrange counterpart to most films of this genre; it has a happy ending. Shot andmetaphorically constructed in black and white, it is a melodrama which oversimplifies itsdramatic details and which has an ending that portrays Jewish prisoners as survivorswalking from a camp in Czeckoslovakia straight onto a brightly colored Israeli soil. It is sobright at the promised land that as the “Schindler Jews” and their descendants advance topay homage to the man responsible for their having remained alive—some are wearingsunglasses. This forced ending—in full color—relies on a fundamentalist reading ofbiblical words “[e]ven so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to theelection of grace ... and so all Israel shall be saved” (Romans 11: 5-26). To be sure... as soon as the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applied to artistic production, thewhole social function of art is revolutionized. Instead of being founded on ritual, it isbased on a different practice: politics (Benjamin 2002:257 emphasis in original).3Many thanks to Annette Vogt for the commentaries made on this paper.Sophia Vackimes28In his book titled Remnants of Auschwitz Giorgio Agamben wrote that there are things thatare initially obscure and things that are purposefully obscured, actively passed over,ignored, or best left unsaid (Agamben 2002:11-14). The Shoah has been treated as afantasy, a comedy, as an element of political ideology, as documentary, as testimony.However, the connection doctors/killing is perhaps the most amazing cinematographicellipsis in the treatment of this topic. This gap can be described as black boxing, which hereis the exaggeration or amelioration of historical testimonies and documents, or theconvenient avoidance of crucial, and even highly volatile information (Latour 1987:130-31), for what could be more volatile than making a link between killing and the modernmedical establishment? It is astonishing, to find that as medicine, biology, eugenics orgenetics, which played a role in the atrocities committed during that time have beengenerally overlooked in cinema. Although many argue that medicine was not a majorplayer at the camps, to others it is a fundamental component of the massacre: “[a]t theAuschwitz ramp, it was doctors who waited and made decisions” (Klee 1999:9).In Auschwitz, Nazi doctors presided over the murder of most of the one millionvictims of that camp. Doctors performed selections—both on the ramp amongarriving transports of prisoners and later in the camps and on the medical blocks.Doctors supervised the killing in the gas chambers and decided when the victimswere dead. Doctors conducted a murderous epidemiology, sending to the gaschamber groups of people with contagious diseases and sometimes includingeveryone else who might be on the medical block. Doctors ordered and supervised,and at times carried out, direct killing of debilitated patients on the medical blocksby means of phenol injections into the bloodstream or the heart. In connection withall of these killings, doctors kept up a pretense of medical legitimacy: for deaths ofAuschwitz prisoners and of outsiders brought there to be killed, they signed falsedeath certificates listing spurious illnesses. Doctors consulted actively on how bestto keep selections running smoothly; on how many people to permit to remain aliveto fill the slave labor requirements of the I.G. Farben enterprise at Auschwitz; andon how to burn the enormous numbers of bodies that strained the facilities of thecrematoria (Lifton 1986:18).The relationship eugenics/genetics/medicine in concentration camps is not new tofilmmaking; it is in hard to trace but nonetheless exists. Perhaps the film that makes thestrongest reference to medicine/killing foreboding the Nazi period is Ingmar Bergman’sThe Serpent’s Egg, 1977, a film in which the protagonist Abel Rosenberg and his brother’swidow Manuela find themselves unwitting subjects of medical experiments which includegassing with chemicals that induce severe psychotic states in both of them as they stay inliving quarters which they later find out have one way viewing mirrors that are disguisedlaboratories. This film, whose action takes place in Berlin during the nineteen-twentiesominously announces the evils to come by way of its title and an explanation given by agovernment official in the story: a serpent’s egg has a thin membrane through which oneBlue Eyed Boys29can see the monstrous creature forming inside. Despite its courage in making such aconnection, the film is ill-regarded by Bergman connoisseurs who often ignore itshistorical boldness in favor of the dramatic masterpieces the recently deceased directorproduced.Had films focused on the doctor/killing issue, no doubt would have the Shoah’s arch-criminal Josef Mengele emerged in more than one cinematographic form4. However, thissurprising oversight has given the sorts of Amon Goeth—a military character who hasperhaps number one billing as the most devious cinematographic criminal of the SecondWorld War—far greater prominence, and a dubious greater-than-life existence in thepopular imago. Mengele, for example, has not received much of a cinematic treatmenteven though he has appreciable cinematic characteristics. The general perception ofMengele’s persona is that he was evil incarnate; it was he who clad in white—the symbolpar excellence of medical garb, and the color he dresses in during various occasions in thefilm—made life and death decisions at the train ramps wherefrom he earned thenickname “angel of death”. However, those many who knew him closest, the prisonerdoctors who were forced to work with him at Auschwitz, had different opinions abouthim; to Vladimir Hanak he “Had the air of a philanthropist,” to Odette Abadi, “Hebehaved like a movie star,” to prisoner doctor Gisella Perl “He was always well attired, veryproper, perfumed,” while to Regina Kryzanowska “His eyes left a bizarre impression, andwe all feared him greatly” (Klee 1999:333-34). This variety in texture—regarding him andother doctors engaged in the uncanny cruelty of the pseudo-scientific experiment—canbe found in other prisoners’ memoirs.To be sure, while Schindler’s List contains a brief scene where it is doctors who performthe work selection; the abuses to the Hippocratic oath are not dealt with in the narrative;trains unloaded their human cargo, the doctors did the sorting, certified the killing, butthe medical connection is not made explicit. It seems that portraying doctors as they ledmillions to their deaths is not cinematographic enough, or not convenient politically.Films twist, bend, obliterate and/or conveniently exaggerate and enhance, but also maskwhat is real; “[i]n a WORLD THAT really has been turned on its head, truth is a momentof falsehood” (Debord 1994:14, emphasis in original).Perhaps one of the biggest surprises to come out of the Nazi trials both in Germanyand Israel, was that the men in charge of the smooth killing operations were common —even banal men; regarding Eichmann, for example, he “was not a ‘monster’” (Arendt1963:60), when he appeared before his accusers;... after the first gasp of surprise, the audience began to feel that his very ordinarinesswas somehow more terrifying. If he had horns on his head, knifelike eyes, and a gash4The exception is a ﬁlm titled Nichts als die Wahrheit directed by Roland Suso Richter, 1999, which didnot gain popularity and is of difﬁcult access. I am thankful to Bernd Gausemeier for his having pointedout the existence of this ﬁlm to me as well as for information on the Kaiser Wilhelm Society.Sophia Vackimes30of cruelty for a mouth, he would have been true to form (Hausner cited in Cole1999:70).The aura—the charmed existence—of objects or even people always remains, but thecontext varies, thus “[j]ust as the entire mode of existence of human collectives changesover long historical periods, so too does their mode of perception” (Benjamin 2002:255).Regarding the Nazi era—and even though some events or personalities are highlycontentious as they were associated with revolting practices—the curiosity they generateis easily witnessed in spaces that exhibit military paraphernalia alongside Jewish campinternee clothing, for example. At the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Museum of Tolerance, inLos Angeles, or at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., the public—composed greatly of persons who condemn the Shoah—will invariably spend much moretime looking at the gleaming golden fasces, helmets, lapel pins, guns, banners and flags ofthe various military and para-military groups existing during the Third Reich than withthe modest Jewish objects on display. Emblems from the SS, helmets, guns, shiny blackboots, photographs of Hitler, no doubt cast a greater spell on onlookers than at the wornout blue and white striped prison clothing of victims branded with a yellow star. The greatappeal of the former is perhaps why their presence is almost avoided altogether at theJewish Museum and at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin.Films have taken advantage and even trivialized the qualities of some of thesetroublesome objects to their benefit. What occurs with actors portraying Nazi cinematicvillains is worth noting; actor Ralph Fiennes—the Amon Goeth of Schindler’s List, goeseasily from arch villain to coveted lover in the English Patient—a film wherenotwithstanding his charisma he is accused of being a Nazi spy. Cinema encouragescrossovers between reality and fiction, and war films are no different, to the point that“[w]hen Mila Pfefferberg, a surviving “Schindler Jew”, was introduced to [Ralph] Fienneson the set of the film, she began to shake uncontrollably, as Fiennes looked so like the realGöth” (Corlis 1994).5This character doubling6lover/evil-doer does not deter the following he has byadmiring fans, rather, it enhances it, and this enhancement is no doubt what TomCruise—who was filming in Berlin as I wrote these pages—is counting on as he preparesfor a role in which he portrays Wehrmacht’s Graf von Stauffenberg, who led the failedattempt against Adolf Hitler’s life in July 1944, moreover, why Nazis or theirparaphernalia have such an allure is complex. For example a trivial comment I once readrationalizing the allure of German outfits was that “they were better cut”, and yes, thatholds true, they have intrinsic qualities that make them appealing to many a viewer; SSuniforms were designed by world famous couturier Hugo Boss. However, less banal5The Ralph Fiennes—Schindler’s List (autographed) Promo Pack can be purchased online for only143.00. It is available at (http://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=260639).6See Robert Lifton’s volume The Nazi Doctors, a study of this psychological phenomenon.Blue Eyed Boys31comments discover other levels of meaning; beyond the allure of a well-cut outfit is thefact that Germanic characters are known to have mysterious or magical powers attributedto them7. “I did not find the double rune on the uniform repellent ...” writes Günter Grassin his autobiography—Beim Häuten der Zwiebel (2006:110).Certain objects are attractive because of their beauty, others are fascinating becausethey connect to supernatural powers; yes, one has to admit that this entails somethingmetaphysical, something that goes beyond materialistic understanding. This is why I usethe term—auratic—with apologies to Walter Benjamin who used it to describe artworksin the nineteenth century sense, and who died while escaping the Nazis. However, I guesshe would agree that it does not matter if objects are beautiful or ugly, contain good orevil—highly volatile categories and contested categories—what matters—and here I amwriting not of the horrors of the Shoah, but addressing something about the social usegiven to objects—some have a special hold on the popular imago, an imago that ismanipulated in many ways in a society where spectacle has become the norm. It remainssuccessful since “the desire of the present-day masses [is] to ‘get closer’ to things” (Benjamin2002:255 emphasis in original) and here the closest we can get is either the objectsthemselves or their cinematic representation. Reactions to those objects and their uses iscomplex, however, watching the reactions of film audiences, or museum visitors one canwitness how at some level objects with such qualities are never entirely severed from theiroriginal ritual function (Benjamin 2002:105). The incorporation, re-transmission,assimilation of signs and symbols is historically determined:... if changes in the medium of present-day perception [and production] can beunderstood as a decay of the aura, it is possible to demonstrate the socialdeterminants of that decay (Benjamin 2002:255).However, while it is something of the past, and many could argue for the decay of theappeal that institutions of that era had, there is still a historical choice to be made inunderstanding what went on: “the ignorance I claim could not blind me to the fact that Ihad been incorporated into a system that had planned, organized, and carried out theextermination of millions of people” (Grass 2006:111). At the camps, every distinctionbetween proper and improper, between the possible and the impossible was blurred,eradicated, disappeared (Agamben 2002:75), even the German Red Cross ambulances werehauling Zyklon B from one place to another in the camps. So, Why are medicaltransgressions and genetic experimentation at the camps overlooked?Cinematic exceptions are The Grey Zone, (Blake Nelson, 2005) where there is a smallintervention by Miklós Nyiszli, a Jewish prisoner doctor—who wrote his memoirsregarding the experiments conducted on human beings at Auschwitz—saves a youngJewish girl found by prisoners in a gas chamber, and a film made for television, Out of the7The New Oxford English Dictionary, 2ndedition., sv. “rune”.Sophia Vackimes32Ashes, (Sargent, 2003) in which camp survivor Gisella Perl—also a Jew and a doctor—performs abortions in order to save interned women’s lives; The Boys From Brazil includesa scene on an island in the Caribbean where he conducts experiments on human beings.Besides those, few films illustrate the medical situation in concentration camps.Sustaining an ellipsis, glossing over an important event, hiding it as is convenient toparticular groups, or even more dangerously, attempting to deny it, the Shoah “marks theend and the ruins of every ethics of dignity” (Agamben 2002:69), although to many, it canbecome a truth that has worn ragged from its being told over and over again. Overlookingflagrant humanitarian, medical and ethical infractions performed in the name of scienceas those occurred in the camps can be as atrocious as the acts themselves, for even thoughthe camps were military installations they were set up through all sorts of medicalprotocols, and Josef Mengele its infamous icon a geneticist.“The inner temporality and the politics of Holocaust memory, however, even whenthey speak of the past, must be the future” (Young 1992:17). [I]ndeed, the very aporia ofhistorical knowledge: a non-coincidence between facts and truth, between verificationand comprehension ... is [t]he Ethica more Auschwitz demonstrata (ethics asdemonstrated at Auschwitz) (Agamben 2002:12-13) that defines our times. If the medicalestablishment of the time did not care about pushing mankind into an eschatologicalabyss and going down in history with such a mark, it is fair, at the very least to maintainthe link between genetics and eugenics in our memories. It is not good enough to say thatthat sort of genetics—now disassociated from current practices because of a slight namemutation—has no relationship to the science of today.Acknowledging that a state of exception ruled at the camps—that human beings wereturned into scientific objects and that genetics led by racism was part of its impulse—wecan begin to discern, “bring to light the fiction that governs [the] Arcanum imperii (secretof power) par excellence of our time” (Agamben 2002:86). Without doubt “nothing thathas ever happened should be regarded as lost to history” (Benjamin 2002:390).∗A new film version of The Boys of Brazil is currently in pre-production and is to be releasedin 2009.Blue Eyed Boys33Works CitedAgamben, Giorgio2002 Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. New York: Zone Books.Arendt, Hannah1963 Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin.Benjamin, Walter2002 Selected Writings. 4 vols. H.E.e.a. Edmund Jephcott, transl. Volume 3: Belknap Pressof Harvard University Press.Cole, Tim1999 Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler; How History is Bought,Packaged and Sold. New York: Routledge.Corliss, Richard1994 The Man Behind the Monster. In Time. New York.Debord, Guy1994 The Society of Spectacle. D. Nicholson-Smith, transl. New York: Zone Books.Grass, Günter2006 Peeling the Onion. M.H. Heim, transl. London: Harvil Seeker, Random House.Klee, Ernst1999 La Médecine Nazie et ses Victimes. O. Mannoni, transl. Arles: Solin.Latour, Bruno1987 Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society.Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Lifton, Robert Jay1986 The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. New York: BasicBooks, Inc., Publishers.Seidelman, William1988 Mengele Medicus: Medicine’s Nazi Heritage. The Milbank Quarterly 66(2):221-238.Young, James1992 The Counter-Monument: Memory Against Itself in Germany Today. Critical Inquiry18:267-96.35But surely, I must fear my mother’s bed?Code 46 begins with a long lasting aerial shot of barren desert upon which several textframes appear:Article 1Any human being who shares the same nuclear gene set as another human being isdeemed to be genetically identical. The relations of one are the relations of all.Due to IVF, DI embryo splitting and cloning techniques it is necessary to preventany accidental or deliberate genetically incestuous reproduction.therefore:i. all prospective parents should be genetically screened before conception if theyhave 100%, 50% or 25% genetic identity, they are not permitted to conceiveii. if the pregnancy is unplanned, the foetus must be screened. any pregnancyresulting from 100%, 50% or 25% genetically related parents must be terminatedimmediatelyiii. if the parents were ignorant of their genetic relationship then medicalintervention is authorized to prevent any further breach of Code 46iv. if the parents knew they were genetically related prior to conception it is acriminal breach of Code 46Set in what is described as “the near future” (Code-46 2003:1), a future that looks toofamiliar and too close for comfort, the story has trappings of a typical unavoidable lovestory that invokes, almost casually, the incest taboo. Code 46, is, according to its directorSophia Vackimes36modeled after “Oedipus”, the great myth of ancient Greece (Code-46 2003:1). Apparently,then, Code 46 (Winterbottom, 2003) was to be an departure from a plot, where instead oftwo individuals’ blissful encounter, we would find a situation resolved not with a happyending certifying the union of—a male and female bodies, but instead, a story doomed tocatastrophic failure. Devised as a romance turned on its head, it initially seems to be asituation typical of many dystopia-oriented science fiction films such as Brazil (Gilliam,1985), or Bladerunner (Scott, 1982), where the would-be heroes—and their beloveds—will face shame and agony by the time the story ends.Set in signature architectural spaces, locations that are increasingly recognizable inmany major modern cities around the globe and abundantly present in the artworksrepresenting globalization, the film presents us a vision of a world where time and spaceare collapsed into a confusion of pasts and futures typical of dystopias. Shot in locationsin Dubai, Shanghai, London it adopts many of the conventions of the cyberpunk aestheticsuch as high/low contrasts between the hotel William stays at while in Shangai andcrowded street scenes reminiscent of Bladerunner. With the presentation of high-techinstruments—usually in their more spectacular form in the science fiction genre—toneddown here to cheap looking contraptions like a photo album, haptic gear turned intoaerobics exercise gadget; all of these artifacts manage in toto to banalize what dystopiaswere usually meant to represent; social decomposition. Gadgets and practices in themedical sciences such as cloning, in-vitro fertilization, diagnostic and visualizationtechnologies, positioned throughout the film, constitute a new framework for humanrelationships; they reinforce false assumptions about science while they reify thecorruption of social norms.The film does not turn the ancient myth into a stand against medical totalitarianismbecause the theme is treated within a framework that not only undermines one of theoldest injunctions known to the Judeo-Christian world, but quite contrary to what weread and hear from the director and actor interviews, the film engages the ancient tabooin a show of “permissive immorality” that acts more like a pornographic suggestion madeto “sate” (Jameson 1992:27) postmodern artifices. It is interesting to understand howtrendy elements are put together, how they feed the yearnings for novelty certain specificpublics crave, as the film dabbles with incest it feeds into “the concomitant denunciationof our deafness” (Virilio 2003:43).Oedipus BureaucraticusWilliam, a fraud investigator, is sent from his employment headquarters to Shanghai tolook into investigate the production of fake passes “papeles”. In this city, as well as in theSeattle that William comes from, English is spoken with a mixture of foreign languagesthat illustrates the ethnic makeup of the “future”; Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, some French